Indian TikTok Rival Chingari Raises $15M Round Led by Republic Capital: Report

Chingari, an Indian short-video platform akin to TikTok, has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Republic Capital, the private venture arm of investment firm Republic, Economic Times reported on Monday.

• Crypto exchange OKEx also made a strategic investment in the company, Economic Times said.
• Chingari's native token GARI will be listed on OKEx, the company said in a statement. The token will also be listed on FTX, Huobi, Kucon, Gate.IO, MEXC Global.
• The funds will be used to enhance the app's technology, introduce new features and grow the platform's reach outside of non-metro cities in India, the report said.
• Chingari's focus has turned towards enabling users to monetize their content with the use of crypto tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFT). As part of its previous funding round in October, Chingari also plans to launch its GARI token on the Solana blockchain.
• Following the banning of TikTok in India in June 2020, Chingari grew rapidly and now boasts over 35 million active users. It aims to reach 200 million by the end of this year on the back of expansion into Indonesia and has plans to expand to other Asian countries and the U.S.
• "Content is accepted globally and we’re creating a 'creator-based economy' so this can help us to onboard millions of new users even from Web 3 space," CEO Sumit Ghosh told CoinDesk. "We are growing aggressively 10 million new users every month, so we should be able to reach our targets by end of 2022 easily."

Read more: Republic Launches $60M Crypto Seed Fund

UPDATE (Jan. 17, 15:57 UTC): Adds CEO comment in last bullet point.